Does ReCore meet our expectations?

Every time we’ve seen trailers for ReCore, me and my friends have gotten really excited. I haven’t really kept up with the latest releases though but saw an ad for ReCore last night on my Xbox One and I bought it for £29. I actually thought it was for sale and had been out for a while until I heard from Jinn that it just came out in her store a few days ago. I haven’t figured out why it’s priced lower than other big titles that comes out on Xbox One.. but I guess maybe I’ll find out!

ReCore

View

Using a core in ReCore

Wow

So today I’ve spent 10+ hours playing ReCore! First of all, it’s just as beautiful as in the trailers, and I love Mack, the cutest little robot dog (corebots as they’re called) ^_^ A bit into the game you start getting more corebots though, and they all have different abilities. Even though Mack is my favorite I ended up not using him at all the last couple of hours, mainly because the other two robots in my possession had abilities that I wanted to be able to use. Yes, you can only have two corebots in your party while on a stage… 😦 The second corebot I got was Seth, he enables you to climb certain walls, so he’s crucial to get to all the secret spots and even to advance in some stages. The third one was Duncan, a big corebot with the ability to break rocks (certain rocks with some green glowing linings in them). He’s of course also crucial if you wanna be able to find all the secrets. Duncan is also a great fighter, which is the only ability Mack has. So.. I’ve ended up only using Duncan and Seth.

Mack

Mach & Joule

Corebot Loadouts

Corebot Seth

Smash it Duncan!

Good Boy!

You can upgrade your companions, with cores and materials you find. You also find blueprints for new parts that you can craft for them. This causes them to also change appearance. To be able to upgrade them and also unload your inventory into your stack (yes, you have a limited inventory on your person) you have to return to Joule’s Crawler. Joule is the protagonist in ReCore ^_^ There is a fast travel system, whenever you find Violet and her fast travel station. They’re located at least once in each new region.

Fast Travel Station

Map

The only issue I have with this system, and this game in general, is the loading times! I dread the moment my corebots need upgrading, or my inventory gets full >_< That means I have to travel back to my Crawler, and then return to where I was.. The further I got into the game, the worse the load times got! I even started timing them! In the beginning it took between 55 seconds to a minute to load a new (or already discovered) area, later it took between 2-3 minutes! It feels like I’m playing on the Playstation One, and it makes me miss the cartridge-based years >_< I don’t understand WHY it has to take this long to load a stage?! I’ve downloaded the game, shouldn’t all the stages be there on my HD? It feels like it’s connecting through my shitty internet and downloading the whole stage each time anew before I start playing it… ridiculous.. Are people with fast internet connections experiencing the same thing? The worst part is if I get to an area where there’s a difficult enemy, and I die.. because then it has to re-load the stage for 2:36 minutes just to put me back at the checkpoint where I was! This happened three times in a row in a spot, and I seriously spent more time waiting for it to load than I actually had gameplay minutes before dying again… OMG… the frustration >_<

Loading screens I’ve been staring at for hours… it feels like

Loading screens I’ve been staring at for hours… it feels like

Loading screens I’ve been staring at for hours… it feels like

Loading screens I’ve been staring at for hours… it feels like

The environments are quite sandy.. there’s a lot of sand, and sand storms, and sand dunes, and sand landscapes. It’s ok though, it hasn’t bothered me yet. Once in a while the stages takes you inside a dungeon, a cavern or a station which changes the scenery to metal surfaces or shining blue crystals embedded in rock walls. The world is not too open, which I like. If games are too big I get stressed because I want to explore everything but I don’t have that amount of time to put into just one game.. but here the sand dunes are lined with rocks and hills, you can climb some of them but once you reach the corner where you’re not allowed to travel any further the air gets filled with radiation, if you don’t turn around you die. Fair enough ^_^ At least you know when/where to stop exploring!

Joule & sand

Could it be.. sand?

Sandy landscapes

Sand!

Rock-sand!

Deserts

Structures in the sand

Fighting in ReCore

Red Room

Other colors

Syncing cores

Massive Door

Other views

Light reflecting from the sand outside

The controls are really great! They feel natural and you get into it really fast, assuming you have some previous gaming experiences XD, and thanks to double jump and dashing mid-air you can reach a lot of nooks and corners in the stages ^_^ There’s also a lot of precision jumping involved in this game, getting from point A to point B you have to sometimes time your jumps and dashing precisely. I love these types of games where they put your skill to the test ^_^ In some dungeons there’s even timed-challenges! 😀 I’m stubborn and don’t give up until I’ve beaten them and gotten every piece of loot, so I’ve spent a good part of the time just replaying a few areas XD I’ve spent even more time searching every corner of every map to find all the loot XD After around 12 hours of gameplay I have 50% of the achievements, but I’ve only beaten 37% of the game.

Obstacle course

Platforming inside structures

Watch out for fire pits

Fighting

My thoughts on this game so far are mainly positive. I haven’t finished it yet, but I’m looking forward to continuing it tomorrow night and so far it’s definitely met my expectations 🙂 It’ll probably take me another 3 or 4 evenings to max it out, since I’m only at 37% after today. Even though the loading times are HORRIBLE, it’s still a good game when you get to play it XD It reminds me a lot of the old school 3D adventures on PS2, like Ratchet and Clank, or Jak & Daxxter, but a little bit less cartoony. It’s beautiful, fun to play and it has an intriguing story ^_^ I can’t wait to find out what has happened to her dad and the rest of humanity! Also, considering that the price is not as high as other new releases I would say it’s definitely worth getting! Of course it doesn’t have as much replayability or hours of gameplay as games like Fallout, but considering the fact that games like Ratchet & Clank were always full-prized I would say that this is definitely a bargain!